The Face of the Future?It's quite possible that Paul F. Tompkins, using little more than a pithy rejoinder and Facebook, may one day be regarded as the man that completely altered the way companies determine what entertainment to release. But let's back up...

As networks and production companies become subdivisions of mega-corporations, their output gets tied closer and closer to the financial bottom line. This means that the artistic decisions are falling to people who are more comfortable with balance sheets than they are with scripts. Additionally, there is now an overload of sources of entertainment - beyond just internet, video games, movies, music, live events, there's also movies-on-demand, thousands of cable channels, Hulu, Netflix Streaming and other ways that people can find some distraction. This oversaturated market, overseen more and more by people with interests in accounting rather than creativity, is making it tougher for programming to differentiate itself, stand out and become popular while also shrinking the window of time available to make such a splash. The result is lots of excellent, original projects are either being lost in the shuffle, canceled or pulled from screens before people have a chance to see them and/or appreciate them.

And what of those fans of these discarded flashes of brilliance? Once their beloved shows or movies are shunned by the public and by corporate masters, they turn to the internet to sign petitions, start social network groups, drum up support or simply whine on their own sites (hey!). The internet has provided these people with something that was utterly unavailable a mere 15 - 20 years ago: a sense of belonging.

While Patton Oswalt has decried the death of that singular rush and empowerment experienced when loving something in a vacuum, the majority of people are comforted to find they are not alone in their love or their interests and that they are not utterly weird or wrong for liking what they like. Misery may love company, but nerdy passion loves it even more. But ultimately, even though there may be an invisible army of like-minded folks banding together to enthuse over their shared interest, rarely does this fanbase clamoring lead to anything productive outside of fanfic or cosplaying. The corporate masters of these properties simply have no way of correlating the intensity of a clique with the possible profitability of its niche interest. That's where Paul F. Tompkins comes in...

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